Memorial Day TV Special on Nat GEO Channel Explores How Cars & Roads Have Shaped America

Driving America, a two-hour documentary about how the automobile has shaped our nation for more than a century, airs 9 p.m., EDT, May 25 on the National Geographic Channel.

The show explores “how car culture has changed the way we have lived, worked, traveled and socialized,” National Geographic says in a release.

But not all the attention is focused on cars and other motor vehicles. One segment looks at roads and road building, especially Dwight Eisenhower’s 1919 experience of leading the Army’s first transcontinental motor convoy, a two-month slog on impassable roads that inspired him to build the interstate highway system in the 1950s.

The show also features Dan McNichol, author of “The Roads That Built America.” In 2003, as part of the ARTBA-created “Great American Road Trip,” McNichol drove cross-country on the Interstates in a 1951 Hudson to highlight the benefits and challenges of our nation’s roadway system.

National Geographic concludes “the automobile’s overwhelming impact on American society is as endless as the roads we’ve built to drive them on.”